Babies Babies Everywhere!

I don't know about you, but I've been noticing a ton of pregnant ladies around recently. I went to a baby shower this weekend and I would say that I was one of maybe 3 girls there that wasn't either pregnant or have a child already. I was definitely a minority!

Since so many of my friends are preggers, I thought it would be fun to knit them some fun little gifts for their little ones. I thought I would try little baby booties. They're not too hard to knit, and you'll actually have a finished item after a few hours of knitting (which is nice!). I wanted to find a seamless bootie because I'm not a huge fan of stitching things together afterwards. I also wanted to find a pattern that allowed me to string a ribbion around the ankle, just because I think it's cute! So I hopped onto Ravelry.com and found exactly what I was looking for. You can find the pattern I used here.

Romni Wool was having a yarn sale, so Ed and I decided to make an adventure of it and venture into downtown Toronto on a Saturday afternoon. We ended up raiding the downstairs sale selection I ended up buying a ball of cream DK weight yarn, ball of blue fingering weight yarn and a ball of pink fingering weight yarn for knitting baby booties. There were no labels/I lost the labels on the balls of yarn so I can't even list that information! All I know is, it's for babies :) I also picked up some supplies for items I am planning to knit for Christmas gifts.

I started knitting with the cream fingering weight yarn. I followed the pattern exactly, using US6 (4mm) DPNs. The only thing I did different was the number of rows I knit for the top of the bootie (I didn't want to make the bootie too long).

When I knit with the blue fingering weight yarn, I used US3 (3.25mm) needles but I had to adjust the pattern to compensate for the smaller needles. This is when the fractions you learned in school come in handly! I will try to explain what I did (I hope this makes sense!!). This is where the information on the label comes in handy.

1) Look for the information that tells you how many stitches make up 1" (or a 10x10cm).

2) Based on the DK weight yarn, it requried 22 stitches to make up 10cm. Based on the fingering weight yarn, it required 27 stitches to make up 10cm. Use this ratio to calculate how many stitches you need for the fingering weight yarn. So (hooray for math!):

22    36

--- = ----

27      x

Calculate x (36*27/22 = 44.18)

3) This pattern calls for multiples of 4 (Because of the ribbing pattern for the cuff). Luckily for us, 44 is a multiple of 4, so we're good! If it wasn't a mulitple of 4, you can either round up or round down the number of stitches until the multiple that you need. This is why it is important to read through and understand the pattern if you're going to make adjustments.

So for the fingering weight, I casted on 44 stitches, knitted 25 rows of the stockinette stitch (k2, p2). The the foot shaping rows, I k27 for the set-up row. For the short rows:

*purl short rows: s1, p10, M1, turn.

*knit short rows: s1, k10, M1, turn.

Knit until 60 total stitches (or to whichever boot length you want).

For the bottom of the bootie, I had to adjust the pattern for the bottom so that:

*p5, p2tog, p16, p2tog, p5 (twice)

*k2tog, k24, k2tog (twice)

*p4, p2tog, p14, p2tog, p4 (twice)

*k2tog, k22, k2tog (twice)

*p3, p2tog, p12, p2tog, p3 (twice)

*k2tog, k20, k2tog (twice)

*p2, p2tog, p10, p2tog, p2 (twice)

*k2tog, k18, k2tog (twice)

Ok so these were not as easy to knit as I thought it was going to be. I screwed up a few times, and after unravelling my work twice (or maybe it was three... haha) I finally got a finished product!

And here are the finished results: